Hello Paisa, The Sun Exchange, WeCashUp Win Innotribe Startup Challenge Africa 2016

The event held at the Ravenala Attitude Hotel in the Balaclava, Mauritius on 18th May, 2016. Twelve startups were selected after a vigorous selection process over a period of 2 months and involving over 100 judges from the financial, technology and startup community.

The finalists were taken through a 2 day pitch training session and mentored by big names like Mike Sigal and Fabricio Doro on how to present their ideas on pitch day. Before this the finalists went through 2 weeks of preparation working with the organisers on their material remotely.

Winners of this years event received $10,000 cash prize and invitations to attend Sibos. Sibos is Swift's annual global financial service conference holding in Geneva from 26 - 29th September, 2016. At Sibos, the startups will have the opportunity to share the stage with FinTech experts, providing great insights on innovation happening across Arica to the financial industry at large.

Bio on the winners:

Hello Paisa, a South African startup, is a low cost international money transfer solution for remittances. According to Ahmed Cassim, Managing Director, Hello Paisa, “My experience at Innotribe has been invaluable. The quality of the coaching sessions has been extraordinary, and the lessons learnt will stay with me forever. To represent the best the African continent can offer in the FinTech space at Sibos is truly an honour and we are humbled”. The Sun Exchange, also based in South Africa, is a peer-to-peer lending platform for investors to fund solar energy projects across the globe.

WeCashUp, a Cameroonian startup, has created a cross border mobile money platform, enabling users to make secure payments via their mobile phones all across Africa.

Innotribe Startup Challenge Africa 2016 held as part of the program for the African REgional Conference 2016 tagged ARC2016. ARC was attended by policy makers, industry leaders and the broader financial community from across the continent. This year’s conference theme ‘Facing Global Challenges’ focused on Africa’s positive trends: a growing and young workforce, plentiful natural resources and seven of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies. Typically attracting up to 500 delegates from around 40 countries, the conference is the perfect place for startups to deliver compelling pitches around their innovative products and demonstrate how they could support the economic development of the continent.

“Our partnership with the SWIFT African Regional Conference over the last two years has highlighted how much SWIFT’s member institutions are keen to understand the FinTech innovation that is happening in their own communities and the importance for local startups to benefit from in-depth industry feedback and gain exposure at a global stage”, says Fabian Vandenreydt, Global Head of Securities Markets, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute at SWIFT. “It was a real pleasure for us to provide expert mentoring and in-depth industry feedback to all participating startups and we wish them a lot of success in their future developments”.

Commenting on Africa’s innovation landscape, Sido Bestani, Head of Middle East, Turkey and Africa at SWIFT says: “This year’s Innotribe Startup Challenge highlights the exciting developments across African FinTech and the range of different business sectors represented shows that innovation is not just focused in one area, The showcase at ARC is a wonderful opportunity for SWIFT and Innotribe to be part of this journey and we look forward to continuing our support for the three winners when they come to Sibos in Geneva later this year.”

The Mauritius showcase was the first regional showcase to be held in 2016. The next regional Startup Challenge will be held in Mexico City on 29 June during SWIFT’s Latin American Regional Conference.

For more information about Innotribe and the Startup Challenge, please visit: www.innotribe.com.

#News #Pitch #FinTech